LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL 2024

La 77esima edizione del Locarno Film Festival avrà luogo dal 7 al 17 agosto 2024. A Shah Rukh Khan verrà assegnato il Pardo alla Carriera. Tenetevi forte: il Re sarà a Locarno la sera del 10 agosto in Piazza Grande per la cerimonia di conferimento del premio, e l'11 agosto per un incontro col pubblico. Devdas verrà proiettato nel corso della manifestazione. Nel comunicato stampa si legge: 'Giona A. Nazzaro, Direttore artistico del Locarno Film Festival: “Ospitare a Locarno una leggenda vivente come Shah Rukh Khan è un sogno che si avvera! La ricchezza e la portata del suo contributo al cinema indiano non hanno precedenti. Khan è un re che non ha mai perso il contatto con il pubblico da cui è stato incoronato. Audace e coraggioso, ha sempre saputo misurarsi con nuove sfide, senza però mai tradire quello che i fan da tutto il mondo si aspettavano da lui. Shah Rukh Khan è un vero “eroe popolare”, sofisticato ma con i piedi per terra: un mito dei nostri tempi”.'

DIVI INDIANI IN ITALIA

Ranveer Singh

Il facoltoso clan degli Ambani continua a regalarci grandi soddisfazioni. Dopo l'indimenticabile spettacolo congiunto del trio regale dei Khan (clicca qui), gentilmente offerto lo scorso marzo dai futuri sposi Anant Ambani e Radhika Merchant, in questi giorni la coppia è in Italia per la sontuosa (interminabile) festa prematrimoniale organizzata su una nave da crociera salpata il 29 maggio da Palermo, con tappe il 30 a Civitavecchia - per una veloce visita della capitale - e domattina primo giugno a Santa Margherita Ligure (con proseguimento nella notte per Genova). Quasi tutti i locali di Portofino sono stati affittati ad uso esclusivo, e la famosa Piazzetta verrà chiusa ai non invitati dalle 17.30 alle 22.30. Alle 21.00 è previsto un concerto privato di Andrea Bocelli. Le nozze si celebreranno in luglio a Mumbai.

Superfluo precisare che, in siffatte circostanze, i miliardari adorano garantirsi la presenza di personaggi famosi di altissimo calibro. La lista è da scorrere in posizione seduta: Salman Khan (credo per la prima volta nel nostro Paese), Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor con la sorella Karisma, Karan Johar, Alia Bhatt con il marito Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Sanjay Dutt, Kiara Advani con il marito Sidharth Malhotra, Janhvi Kapoor con il padre Boney Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan, Ananya Panday, Disha Patani, Ayan Mukerji, Atlee. Alcuni media indiani citano anche Aamir Khan e addirittura la famiglia Bachchan. Poco o niente sta trapelando (sigh), le fotografie che circolano in rete si contano sulle dita di una mano - tocca accontentarsi e attendere con pazienza. 

Gli Ambani sembrano apprezzare parecchio l'Italia, dal momento che anche Isha Ambani, sorella di Anant, nel 2018 aveva festeggiato il suo fidanzamento sul lago di Como, con abituale corollario di un folto gruppo di celebrità (clicca qui).

Aggiornamenti del 2 giugno 2024: 

- Video: Shah Rukh Khan e Ranbir Kapoor a Portofino

- Video: Shah Rukh Khan al concerto di Andrea Bocelli

- Video: Salman Khan e Sanjay Dutt a Portofino

- Video: Kiara Advani e Sidharth Malhotra a Portofino

Ananya Panday a Roma

Sara e Ibrahim Ali Khan a Roma

Ananya Panday a Portofino

Janhvi Kapoor a Portofino

SHRAYANA BHATTACHARYA: DESPERATELY SEEKING SHAH RUKH

[Archivio]

Vi propongo una rassegna stampa relativa al saggio del 2021 Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh. India's lonely young women and the search for intimacy and independence, a firma dell'economista Shrayana Bhattacharya. Il volume indaga la condizione socio-economica femminile in India partendo da uno spunto piuttosto bizzarro: se e in quale modo la superstar hindi Shah Rukh Khan ha influito nella vita personale delle sue sostenitrici, in particolare nel periodo della liberalizzazione economica (anni novanta). Viene da chiedersi: esiste davvero qualcosa che il Re non possa fare?

- Taps into the Myth and the Mannat of SRK, Prathyush Parasuraman, Film Companion, 2 novembre 2021:

'Mannat

Shrayana Bhattacharya in her fascinating book, (...) her love letter to both Shah Rukh - not Shah Rukh Khan, not SRK, but Shah Rukh, an invitation to intimacy - and women, calls him "the receptacle of so many of our expectations". Often, she capitalizes the H in He when referring to him, both aware of and buying into his god-like stardom. (...) Is it possible to extract the human from the myth? No? The alternative, which is what Bhattacharya does here, is then to contextualize that myth. (...) In 2017 (...) 60% of the audience members at an Indian cinema hall were men. Even in Mumbai, the single screen theaters are often bastions of male assertion. Most of the women Bhattacharya speaks to - from small towns, villages, big cities, the metropolis - were often dictated to never visit the theater. When they did so secretely, they were punished, slapped. It was an unsafe place, unbecoming of a woman. And yet Shah Rukh emerged in their lives, "divided by class, united by fandom", with pirated copies and music cassettes of his films, the television revolution that brought his cinema into the house, and later the internet, which would bring the entire archive of his films and interviews under the access of a thumb swipe. (...) But Bhattacharya is clear that while he elicits female fandom, he isn't a feminist icon. The characters he plays often champion noxious ideas of entitlement or dated pursuits of love. But his unthreatening gait, his inviting charm, and his interviews where he champions his wife paint an aura of the masculine ideal. (...) Even by measuring the screen time given to the men as compared to the women in his films, Bhattacharya notes how there is more space and time for women in his cinematic universe compared to his contemporaries. (...)

The labour market

Reading Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, I often felt like I was reading two different, often unconnected books - one on the condition of women in the labour market, and the other, about how these women relate to, aspire towards, or seek solace from Shah Rukh. (...) The book on the labour market is cutting, precise, laden with statistics, and then counter-statistics to doubts you might and will have; the kind of careful defensiveness that comes from being surrounded by skeptics. Bhattacharya notes that the labour force participation of women has dropped despite the economic boom. The numbers are shocking. Between 2004 and 2011, while the economy was growing at around 7%, the share of women in the labour force fell to 33%, and thereon even further. In 2017, it hit a historic low of 23,3%. The pandemic further pushed this decline. India is the only middle-income country where economic growth and poverty reduction has not led to more women working outside of their home. India is placed among the bottom 5 countries on gender gap in economic participation. (...) But this isn't just an economic problem. It is a problem of social conditioning, for even among the wealthiest top twenty percent of urban Indians between the ages of 20 and 55, only 6% of married women were employed. But how does this connect to Shah Rukh? The women Bhattacharya speaks to - 80 in-depth interviews - (...) are also fans of Shah Rukh Khan. The tether, as one can imagine, between the labour market and the Shah Rukh fandom, is very thin. It is this part of the book, on Shah Rukh's fandom, that feels awkward and repetitive in its insistence on profundity. The insights are shaky, like throwing ideas at a wall, hoping something will stick. She uses the famous "Shah Rukh or Salman?" question as an icebreaker, and has met many a fan through this. Some of them are confused by her prodding. (...) Often Shah Rukh emerges only on the edges of their story, unimportant, but dressed up to feel central. (...) One of the fans Bhattacharya interviews, facetiously, but also, perhaps, correctly, developed a test to detect misogyny in Indian men using the fandom they belong to, "If a man likes Shah Rukh, he is usually progressive. If a man likes Salman, he is bad news. If a man likes Aamir, he's often a bearded liberal who likes his own voice too much. My test rarely fails".'

- In the sunshine of Shah Rukh's love, Uday Bhatia, Mint, 22 gennaio 2022:

'“I thought I was collecting stories about how women see Shah Rukh Khan and his films. In fact, I was collecting narratives of how they saw themselves and those around them.” This is the crux of Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, an ambitious and impassioned non-fiction book that looks at the lives of women in India through the lens of their fandom. Shrayana Bhattacharya, a senior economist at the World Bank, spoke to women across economic strata for 15 years about love, work, agency, and the actor whose films offer everything from diversion to comfort and encouragement. (...)

Did the realisation that this is a book about Shah Rukh’s female fans, and not about the man himself, arrive at the start?

I think it came towards the middle, to be honest. In 2006, I was sent to collect data, the way any research assistant would. All these women I was sent to survey, when I would ask them about their wages, their working conditions, these were realities they were very aware of. I was uncomfortable that these people were so bored, so I started talking about Shah Rukh. I thought I was asking them about him, about his films, but instead they were talking about their husbands, their lovers, how difficult it is to earn money to watch Shah Rukh. I diligently had these conversations. Some of them knew I was thinking of converting these into an academic book at that time. Till 2013 it was, to me, these women and how they see Shah Rukh. Then, I decided - for personal reasons - that I wanted to broaden the scope of the book to include my own class. It’s when I started to talk to them and went back to look at the old notes that it occurred to me this was no longer a book about Shah Rukh Khan. I realised he was actually a research device. Then I completely restructured the book. (...)

One thing you reiterate is that these women are active creators of the Shah Rukh persona.

Received wisdom was he was the creator of that persona, and everyone else was just a consumer. But I realised that narrative is totally wrong. If you look at what’s usually said about Shah Rukh, it’s that he’s an NRI (non-resident Indian) star, who caters to thirsty housewives. I did not see that at all. I knew that he was the person who narrated the story around social mobility, but the amount he symbolised that to people from an elite background surprised me. And then what really surprised me was the way women in working class and low-income communities thought of him as being an escape when their lives were so difficult, giving them almost a demonstration of what a good man could be. I was shocked about the way women would cry about his films when talking about the lack of romantic agency in their lives. I was really surprised how, for a younger generation of women, he represents opportunity and liberalisation.

Why do you term his best performance that of the “unapologetic middle-class superstar”?

This is where the economy reacts with film. Inequality among our top 10%, the difference between the mega rich and the merely rich, has grown unimaginably. And I think he captures this. When people look at him, they see a merely rich person who has become mega rich. He has been, from his early 20s, the hyper elite of our country. And yet people feel so taxed because of the way network wealth is so important in our economy, that they will all look at him as someone who “made it”, who triumphed over patronage and networks. Another reason I think is important is he came to prominence in that liberalisation period. Suddenly, there were creative spirits of the economy that had been unleashed - he’s one example of that. He capitalised on everything the reform process maintained. (...) We think of him as capturing that original moment. I will say one more thing. If you look at his (early) interviews, I don’t think anyone is talking about money and the need to earn it and hold on to it (as much as he is). Bollywood stars don’t talk about money. But he’s saying openly in interviews that I needed to take loans, I needed to buy a house. He was very open about it.

You write that women who grew up watching Shah Rukh films graduated to watching his interviews in their 30s. Why do you think this is?

I think there are three reasons. One is that he was one of the first actors who, in the 1990s, talked about feeling bad, feeling depressed. I think a lot of women connected with him because he addressed these everyday negative feelings of anxiety, competition, job market issues. The second reason people were very enchanted was that he was a good public speaker. I know so many women, and men also, who said they would take tips on how to talk in public from his interviews. And the third is just that they are really charming and fun. He will entertain you, he will illuminate - it’s a performance. And there’s a fourth thing, which is particularly for women. If you look at the interviews, he was always talking about his mother, his wife. He was talking about marital fidelity, about his female co-stars. We can say some of it might be posturing - but he was saying it. I don’t think any of our male superstars at that time were valorising womanhood.

At one point, you paint, and address, a composite picture of the Shah Rukh fan. It reminded me of how, in market research, one is asked to visualise the target group as a single person.

The way I did that was, there were about a hundred women from my class group whom I spoke to. I wrote up an average. And then I thought, what’s a way to communicate an average? So what’s on the page is the median elite Shah Rukh fan.

Did you debate whether to interview Shah Rukh for the book?

Actually, I never thought of it. (...) This is not a text about Shah Rukh but a text about gender and economy, and he played this research device role to enter into the lives of these women. (...) He doesn’t need to be involved, because, in a way, it’s not him as a person but him as a construct. I realised that if he entered the agency would no longer be with the ordinary fan. He’s so powerful - it would just become him and his voice.

The book was to release around the time the storm over his son Aryan Khan exploded. Were you worried that a narrative you had constructed over so many years might spin out of control?

No, and this is something that’s heartening. I was confident that the love for him superseded whatever internet trollery political agents could buy. Having said that, I faced abuse from right-wing nuts when I put up an innocuous tweet about how I used to stand outside Mannat. I know that because of who he is and where we are as a country, the moment you say this generation of women is in love with a Muslim actor, there are people who will react with extremely hateful views'.

Shrayana Bhattacharya

- In a sea of Indian men, why everyone is seeking Shah Rukh, Sarim Naved, The Wire, 8 febbraio 2022:

'Khan is a unifying factor for women, Adivasi and Brahmin. The author is an accomplished economist and writer, choosing Khan as the constant for her study of Indian women, and to an extent men, born in the ’80s and ’90s. It goes beyond the anecdotal and evaluates its subjects utilising hard data as well. While Khan may be the constant, the variables are many - caste, class, geographical and occupational. The struggles of these women, divided by these variables, are of course very different from each other. Some seek personal fulfilment while others are just looking to make a living. (...) I can fully endorse this work - it is deeply engaging, and as a reader, or at least a male one, will take your minds down many paths which you did not know existed. As an analysis of the world of 30-something metropolitan professionals, regardless of gender, it’s a therapeutic read. It’s just accurate. The Shah Rukh Khan mythos started in the mid-1990s and is still going strong, even if every new release is not a monster hit. Khan is now in the news mostly for the attacks on him and his family. The myth is a dangerous one for the current ruling dispensation. It unifies what they want to divide. This man who flaunts his faith while maintaining an old-world air of accommodative secularism does not conform to the stereotype that they wish to assign to him. A work as detailed as this would obviously have taken years to plan, research and to write. By luck or design, the book has released at a time when Khan has become more relevant than ever. The “idea of India” that is the site of all political contestation these days now incorporates the fate of Shah Rukh Khan as an unavoidable part of its own destiny. Will Khan stay in India? Will he continue acting in films? Will he withdraw from public life? These are questions not only about Khan the person but about the trajectory that the country is on. Leaving one’s own imagined grievances with Khan aside, the man is rather uniquely placed to influence this country and society. We need people who can communicate charm, empathy and kindness. So, I say, Khan for PM. Why the hell not?'.

- recensione di Suman Joshi, The Hindu, 12 marzo 2022:

'Using Shah Rukh Khan’s films and the reforms of 1991 as starting points, Shrayana Bhattacharya makes women talk about their lives, from compromises to outright rebellion. (...) This genre-bending book looking at women in post-1991 India draws you in from the word go. (...) It presents a powerful commentary on the lives of Indian women and the ways they deal with inequities. Most importantly, it provides women a toolkit to navigate the changing landscape of economy and society in their search for freedom and happiness. 

Watershed moment 

The watershed moment of the 1991 reforms serves as an anchor, as the author traces the rise of the Indian economy and the simultaneous arrival of Shah Rukh Khan as a superstar. The author wears her economist hat lightly, but combines hard economic data, such as falling female labour force participation rate, hidden taxes women pay and a whole host of metrics, with surveys and interviews to paint a picture of the state of women. What makes this work special is her ability to use heart-warming, everyday stories to provide a relatable view of complex economic phenomena. The book draws on her work of following the trajectories of a group of women across caste, religion and class groups over several years. It has a generous smattering of songs and dialogues from SRK’s movies, deploying his work as a literary tool to string together stories of women whose paths would otherwise never cross. The magical SRK touch adds to the readability and fun quotient of the book. (...) ‘Fantasies’ give a glimpse into what Shah Rukh inspired in young elite girls growing up in the 1990s. The stories, one of which is the author’s own, and interviews of women bring out the contradictions women confront and the compromises they have to make despite being educated and upwardly mobile. Questions are raised regarding gender relations among the well-heeled. “Why do women resign their love lives to the trappings of male power and prestige? Why do so many successful women acquire a taste and tolerance for inequality in their private lives?” An interesting side story is the ringside view of Delhi drawing rooms with their own codes; and the trappings of power and male chauvinism. Her astute observation about the gaps in confidence arising out of social conditioning - “The upper class mating market seemed neatly divided between males with unwarranted self confidence and women with unwarranted self-doubt” - makes one question and ponder over what can be done to bridge these gaps. The 1991 reforms are estimated to have pulled millions of people out of poverty. A transformation of this magnitude that included structural changes in the economy was bound to have an impact on women. The expansion in large scale manufacturing, urbanisation and the boom in IT services changed the nature of the economic opportunities available, thereby impacting familial relationships too. 

Gambles for a dream 

‘Baazigar’ tackles the changes in the nature of relations within families and the societal contract during this economic boom. It also throws light on the nature of resistance for women in tier two cities, away from the cosmopolitan milieu of the big cities. The stories of women in this section all involve the baazis, gambles that women in tier-II cities take in an attempt to live a life they dream of. The stories ‘The Accountant’ and ‘A Girl called Gold’ are characterised by the struggle and strife at home to gain an education, choose a career and resist the pressures to “settle down”. While Gold makes the ultimate gamble and runs away from her Rajasthan home, The Accountant wages her battle of resistance within the confines of her home, revealing the many shades of pushback against restrictive traditional family structures. Women claim their space in their own unique ways, choosing from a spectrum of options from compromise to outright rebellion. There is no magic bullet to empowerment. No book studying gender in India can be complete without studying the lives of women from the informal economy, who are in the bottom two-thirds of wages, in households at or below the poverty line. In ‘Working from Home’, the author leaves the capital and travels to Gujarat, Jharkhand and the Northeast. She provides insights into the invisible lives of women in home-based industries such as textiles and tobacco as also domestic and field survey workers. The first stop is Ahmedabad. Given the vast socio-economic gap between the author and the women, how does she get these women to open up about their lives, love and aspirations? Through Shah Rukh and his movies and music, of course! The women open up about their struggles after the author uses the ice breaker question: “who is your favourite actor?” Using the metaphor of dialogue from the movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - “a home that is built on the foundations of compromise and not love is not a home (ghar), it’s a house (makaan)” the author demonstrates the give and take that women of the slum struggle with for mobility and economic independence. The second story is from Rampur, U.P., where Manju represents the boredom of women in small town India that have been denied agency for work and leisure. While young men get to ride bikes and watch movies, girls are denied mobility for work or leisure thus experiencing inequality through boredom. 

In her conclusion, the author draws attention to the “crisis of love” and discusses solutions to issues women face. She makes a compelling argument to avoid big bang revolutions or twitter hashtag movements, instead imploring women to attempt “intimate revolutions”, where each one of us looks into our personal equations to address our own disequilibriums'. 

- Read an exclusive excerpt from Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, Hindustan Times, 5 gennaio 2023.

Vedi anche How Hindi films saw liberalization

25 YEARS OF DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE, BOLLYWOOD'S BEST LOVE STORY

[Archivio]

Vi segnalo il lunghissimo articolo 25 years of ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge,’ Bollywood’s best love story, di Neha Prakash, pubblicato il 7 ottobre 2020 dall'edizione americana di Marie Claire:

'From its plot to its premiere, DDLJ broke new ground in Bollywood.

Kajol (lead actress, Simran Singh): We saw the whole film, together, at the premiere. We all dressed up in our Bombay finery, and it was fabulous. It was an amazing feeling to know you made this. And all of us loved the film universally. That is something that’s quite rare, actually.

Anupama Chopra (film critic and author of the 2002 book Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge: A modern classic): It was a blockbuster out of the gate. This was not about word of mouth. I remember so clearly at the premiere at New Excelsior [in Mumbai] - it’s a 1,000-seat hall. And it was just euphoric. And the critical reception was exactly the same. It was just one of those movies that sweep you away.

Sharmishta Roy (art director): This wasn’t any part of our Indian genre, in terms of visuals. It was one of the earliest road [trip] films.

Manish Malhotra (costume designer): There was a lot of glamour. That’s a tough one to get because you are [also] trying to make the characters a bit real, which was a new thing, which Aditya Chopra started.

Anupama Chopra: Traditionally, the West had been portrayed as a sort of decadent hotbed of sin in Hindi movies. (...) It was the person from India who showed the Indian in the West what Indian values were. And here was this film that completely turned this on its head, because here’s a guy [Raj] who is buying beer in the first few minutes of the film. Here’s a guy who’s obviously flirtatious. Here’s a guy who’s born and bred in the U.K., and yet he turns out to be more Hindustani than the guy who was raised in Punjab. That was a very new idea at that time.

Shah Rukh Khan (lead actor, Raj Malhotra): This film came at a time when the audiences were getting more receptive to a story like DDLJ and a pairing like mine and Kajol’s. A lot of external factors worked for the film: the novelty of a modern rom-com, for example, and liberalization.

Anupama Chopra: It’s such a seductive fantasy. It appealed to people in the West because all the NRIs felt like “Just because we live here doesn’t mean we lost our Indian-ness. It doesn’t mean we’re not desi anymore; it doesn’t mean that our roots have been severed.” And, of course, it works for the people who are still living in India because it reconfirms this is the original land of value and beauty and song and dance and all the rest of it.

The script: Aditya Chopra quite literally rewrote the Hindi rom-com with a unique screenplay that challenged Bollywood stereotypes and the meaning of happily-ever-after.

Anupam Kher (supporting actor, Dharamvir Malhotra): The script was very, very fresh. [In Hindi films before], it was a typical Romeo and Juliet concept: The parents aren’t happy with who you are; the world wanted [the couple] to be united, and the so-called “forces against you” were the parents. But here, the boy was a very idealistic person. [The boy] respected the girl and her parents, especially her father. [Aditya] very intelligently represented NRIs and Londoners and the typical Punjabi [person].

Kajol: I loved the script, from beginning to end. There was no part that I heard that I did not feel completely there, and present, and completely part of the film... There is one song where I wasn’t sure about how it would be taken on screen: “Zara Sa Jhoom Loon Main.” I didn’t think I looked drunk at all, and I was like, “This is not gonna work. I don’t believe this myself.” Because I’m a complete teetotaler. I don’t know what it’s like to get drunk. But fortunately for me, [that scene] turned out okay. It’s not as bad as I thought it was.

Shah Rukh Khan: There were several improv moments. They enhanced the script, for sure. There was this scene with Amrish Puri [who played Simran’s father, Chaudhary Baldev Singh] where he was feeding the pigeons. And we had this really funny scene where we are both awkwardly going “aao, aao” to the pigeons. It is a call for pigeons I had heard in Delhi, so I added it. Even the flower that sprays water on Kajol’s face, we hadn’t told her what would happen.

Anupam Kher: That’s one thing that is fantastic about Shah Rukh: He is a very affectionate, easy person [to act with]. When we sort of clap hands and do gibberish words with each other, I invented those words on the set. And when Raj is saying, “I just failed,” and I introduce him to our “ancestors” in paintings on the wall, that was similar to my own family... My own uncle had failed in 7th/8th grade. So I asked Mr. Chopra, “Can I use their real names in the movie?”

Shah Rukh Khan: It was a set of friends just having fun... with the material. Adi had a much clearer vision [of] where he was going with it and what he wanted to say in it. So the voices belong to us, but the words and feelings are all his, to be honest.

Kajol: I think when Adi wrote the film, he meant it to show that families are the way they are everywhere. That’s what the film was about: embracing what the world has ahead of you, but don’t forget your roots.

Anupam Kher: The name of the film is given by my wife [actress Kirron Kher]. There was a lot of debate: “What should be the title of the film?” There is a very famous song called “Le Jayenge, Le Jayenge Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” from an old Hindi film [1974’s Chor Machaye Shor]. So my wife said, “At the end of [this] movie, the boy finally says, ‘I will take away the bride.’ Why don’t we call it Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge [The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride]?” Everybody loved it. [She] gets a separate [credit] in the [film]. It says, “Title given by Kirron Kher.”

Simran and Raj and Kajol and Shah Rukh: The making of a superstar pair, on screen and off.

Kajol: My first impression of Simran was that she was nothing like me. I didn’t agree with all this being too dutiful. I was like, “Can’t she think for herself?” [Laughs.] I played her dutifully, but I made fun of her on set.

Shah Rukh Khan: Her energy was palpable... Nobody could’ve played Simran better than Kajol.

Kajol: I thought, There has to be something of Simran inside me. So maybe 90 percent of her wasn’t [me], but that 10 percent was.

Shah Rukh Khan: Raj was unlike anything I had done. Before DDLJ, there was Darr, Baazigar, Anjaam - films in which I had portrayed negative characters.

Kajol: I thought Raj was a cool hero. I thought that he had a lot of unexpected depth to him. You get the feeling he’s this really carefree guy who doesn’t really have much to him; he’s just into how his hair looks and how he kicks the football. But somewhere toward the end of the film, you start believing in him as a character.

Anupama Chopra: It really spoke to a country in a great sort of cultural churning. In the ’90s, we got satellite television, the economy had opened up, and there was all this stuff coming in from the West: the programming, the clothes, the brands. There was an actual dilemma about what constitutes “an Indian.” Who constitutes an Indian? And Shah Rukh Khan as Raj was the answer.

Shah Rukh Khan: I was told by many people that I looked unconventional... very different from what the perception of a leading man was. I did feel maybe not being handsome enough - or as they called it then “chocolaty” - would make me unsuitable for romantic roles. Also, I am very shy and awkward with ladies, and I didn’t know how I would say all the loving, romantic bits. I was excited to work with [Adi], but I had no idea how to go about it and also if I would be able to do it well. I always felt Adi’s love for me made him cast me.

Anupam Kher: In [Adi’s] mind, he was Raj. [Adi] wanted Shah Rukh to be the way he wanted to be in life: principled but naughty.

Anupama Chopra: This was the film that established SRK as a guy who can romance in a way that we had never seen before. Because he’s not “macho” in the traditional sense. Here’s a guy who’s in the kitchen with the women. Here’s a guy who keeps Karva Chauth [festa hindu caratterizzata dal digiuno femminile] with his girlfriend. He’s telling the aunt which sari to buy. And none of this means that he’s any less manly. It’s just that he’s secure enough to be all of those things and to be in places that are traditionally female. You can’t imagine that very macho action hero of the ’80s doing that.

Shah Rukh Khan: I found the character endearing and sweet in the right way. The over-the-topness was my contribution.

Kajol: Shah Rukh played Raj really convincingly. With every film he works on, he’s there 300 percent of the time. He memorized everybody’s [lines], and then [laughs] during rehearsals he’d be saying my dialogues as well as his dialogues.

Shah Rukh Khan: What worked for Raj and Simran on screen was basically the pure friendship that Kajol and I shared off screen. It was all so organic that there were moments in front of the camera that we didn’t feel like we were acting at all. We didn’t really plan scenes. We just let them flow, and if we didn’t like something, we could just blurt it out to each other without any formality.

Kajol: We would just crack jokes. Everybody on set was so mischievous. It’s just great fun to work with people that you actually enjoy the company of. When you work on film, there’s a lot of time that you’re just waiting for everybody to get set up for one shot after the other. That actually makes people friends and makes people be completely comfortable with each other. We can sit and wait for the sun to rise, literally, [together].

Shah Rukh Khan: I have to admit, for someone who doesn’t like mushy, romantic films, the scenes with Kajol and I did make me feel all fuzzy and warm. There, I said it!

The music: New-on-the-scene composing duo and brothers Jatin-Lalit teamed up with icons like singer Lata Mangeshkar and lyricist Anand Bakshi to develop what would become the best-selling Bollywood soundtrack of 1995.

Lalit Pandit (music composer): We had a grand session [audition] with Yash Chopra, Aditya... We didn’t know what film was being planned. We just wanted to work with Yash Chopra. We were singing our new songs - I still remember I had sung two songs. One was “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna.” And I sang the tune for “Mere Khwabon Mein.” I didn’t have the words, so I just sang the tune. Nothing happened for about a month. But then we got a call from Aditya Chopra: “I’m planning a film. How busy are you guys?” And he asked, “That ‘Mehndi’ song, do you still have that song?”

Jatin Pandit: Once we heard the script, we made up our mind that we have a jackpot on our hands. We both worked very hard. For all the [scenes], we made at least 20 songs. And out of 20, we ourselves rejected five or six songs. And then we [presented them] to Aditya Chopra. “Chal Pyar Karegi” we had done [for] DDLJ as well. It was in [the 1998 film] Jab Pyaar Kisise Hota Hai.

Lalit Pandit: We sat for days and days and days and days, trying to crack each of the songs. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of an opportunity. Anand Bakshi was on board, and Lataji [Lata Mangeshkar] was going to sing all the songs, which was very rare during those days.

Kajol: My daughter recently downloaded the entire album. She was like, “Oh my God, Mum, you had great music.” It’s the kind of music that is timeless. I loved “Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko.” That’s one of my favorite songs.

Jatin Pandit: There was one song I was very sure about: “Zara Sa Jhoom Loon Main.” They were thinking it was too fast and energetic to have a drunk girl singing those lines. But Anand Bakshi said, “When you’re young and you drink, you get all the more energy.”

Lalit Pandit: One of my most favorite songs on the film is “Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko.” I was singing out the intro at [Adi’s] place. When I sang those lines, he said, “You know how I’m going to [shoot it]? I’m going to fade in and fade out, they’re going to be on the bus, and Shah Rukh will come, and then he’ll fade out, and then Kajol will come, and then again Shah Rukh will come, and then again he’ll fade out.” I had never heard such kind of detail. Adi was completely - there’s no other word - brilliant. He was like a third partner in music, he contributed so much. He was very instinctive about what he wanted in his songs.

Jatin Pandit: The piano piece in “Ruk Ja O Dil Deewane,” so many people tried to play it, but Aditya Chopra played that. And “Ghar Aaja Pardesi” - it also became one of the film’s biggest hits, and Pamji [Pamela Chopra, Aditya’s mother] sang in that song.

Shah Rukh Khan: I don’t change the radio channel when a DDLJ song comes on. I can never get sick of them. They bring back memories of a film that shaped my path forward in an unforgettable way.

Bollywood goes designer: The film’s costume creator, Manish Malhotra, elevated Hindi film style by combining ready-made looks with Western sophistication.

Manish Malhotra: In the ’90s, all the tailors were making dresses with frills, all these fitted dresses. That was the norm. But [in Yash Chopra films], it was all about the luxury, the lifestyle, the richness. There’s one kind of richness that is all about embroidery, but Yash Chopra films were different. The richness was about the setup: the beautiful home, the girl in a pure chiffon sari with pearls. It was an elite chicness. An upmarket understanding. I was trying to remove all the frills and make it more monochromatic and make it more Western looking. My first thing was color. Old-world colors - bring them all back in. A lot of old rose; a lot of powder blue. There’s a lot of peachy coral.

Kajol: It’s a very simple, beautiful aesthetic. It’s classic - maybe not the beret on my head. [Laughs.]

Manish Malhotra: Simran is a girl who is real. She’s very identifiable. There’s something that makes her look stand out when she’s in a crowd. That was key. They didn’t want a sensuous or a very sexy Simran. I did a very real Simran - with a dash of glamour. And Kajol, being Kajol, she didn’t care too much about the drape [of the sari]. She was never the actress who would be like completely pinned and completely stitched and all of that. And Kajol would never want to do too much makeup. She’d be like, “I’m just running to the set. I’m happy with my look.”

Kajol: I can still imagine wearing the shaded chiffon sari, or I can still imagine myself wearing a plain, simple salwar kameez with a shaded dupatta.

Manish Malhotra: [The thinking was] there can be a beauty in a white kurta and a white salwar. The quality and the class also can come from the way it’s tailored.

Kajol: When we were shooting for “Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko,” there was a shot where we’re going round and round in the rain. We had to get these fire engines to pour the rain for us. It was Switzerland, and that cold was unimaginable. And by the end of it, it was so cold that if I did not walk or run back to the hotel, we would have just frozen on the spot. I don’t think anybody ever thought about my comfort when I was wearing a chiffon sari in the middle of the snow and the ice. The red [mini] dress in the snow was even worse, trust me. [Laughs.]

Manish Malhotra: We didn’t even know there would be that much snow. In those days, the heroes were in mufflers and coats, and the heroines wore these itsy-bitsy saris. I think I was that culprit who started that. It was about looking glamorous.

Shah Rukh Khan: There was a certain charm and playfulness that came along with the hat [which was taken from the film’s production head], the guitar, the leather jacket, the sunglasses. They all added to the character and helped shape how I eventually portrayed him. Today, if you see those three things next to each other, without any picture of Raj, your mind will immediately take you to DDLJ.

Manish Malhotra: That was completely from Aditya Chopra’s eye; he wanted that jacket.

Shah Rukh Khan: The jacket, I loved it and still have it. It was a Harley-Davidson jacket. [But] the motorcycle was rented and we had to return it.

“Mere Khwabon Mein”: In the film’s first song sequence, Kajol cemented Simran’s status as the quintessential ladki [ragazza] next door.

Sharmishta Roy: [For Simran’s house] we were keen it should be warm in its color palette and also have a very strong Indian element. We used a lot of plaids. There are lots of artifacts that [the family] would have picked up from their visits to India. I hadn’t actually ever been [to London] to see the houses. [At the time] I believed if you’re in a foreign land, you believe it’s going to be a big, big space. But, in fact, a family like that would have lived in a rather cramped space. Now when I look back and see [the big house set], I find that bothersome.

Manish Malhotra: The first song, “Mere Khwabon Mein,” we were shooting in a studio in Mumbai. There was this whole thing that she’s dancing in the rain and she wears a towel and all of that.

Kajol: It was a really big towel, let me put it that way.

Manish Malhotra: With the white skirt, Adi saw it and he says, “I think it’s looking too long.” I said, “So should we cut it?” And suddenly the skirt, which was so much [holds hands a foot apart], became so much [moves hands six inches apart]. I said, “Now what do we do?” And Kajol said, “Well, I’m okay if you guys are okay.” Kajol was very “Whatever you guys decide” kind of thing. But I told Aditya, “Will it look too much that she’s wearing this sexy white skirt in the rain?” He said, “You know what? She’s with her mother [played by Farida Jalal] in this song. It won’t look like that.”

Kajol: We just wanted to make it look kind of, like, innocent-sexy.

Sharmishta Roy: [Pamela Chopra] told me how they dried their clothes over there [in London] for that scene: put out in the backyard with a simple stand, a kind of clothes hanger. And she actually drew that out for me to show me what it would look like.

Kajol: It was great fun, actually. Everything was choreographed, from the window opening to the song. The only part that I could not do, I think, was feeling shy. So that took at least 45 minutes for Adi to explain to me: “This is what you are supposed to do when you are feeling shy. How would you feel shy?” I don’t have a single shy bone in my body. Eventually he gave up on me, and he was just like, “Just do this: Look straight at one point, and then eventually just slowly lower your eyes down.” And that’s exactly what I did.

Lalit Pandit: The song that I first recorded was Lataji’s solo song, “Mere Khwabon Mein” - the same tune I had hummed out to Adi in the meeting session that we had. Having Lataji on this album gave it that edge that the music needed.

Jatin Pandit: She’s an icon. There’s no words to express what she is.

“Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna”: The making of a showstopping shaadi [matrimonio] scene.

Kajol: We had the most fun during “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna” because we were all together.

Shah Rukh Khan: I remember how difficult it was to do “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna.” I am not very good with dances like that, but it doesn’t show so much on screen.

Jatin Pandit: When the film is in the U.K., we had to have a different kind of texture to the melody and the treatment. But “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna” was totally Indian. Like a festive mood, and the instruments, the tutti and the arrangement of the violin - we had this arrangement by which we can differentiate the two countries. The song was very authentic in style. (...)

Sharmishta Roy: The courtyard became an important aspect of that house [set]. It was meant to be a typical [compound] in Punjab, where joined families would stay. What decided the warm color palette for those scenes was actually the brick floor. And because it was a house for the wedding - where a lot of golds and jewel tones were used - it formed a perfect backdrop for it.

Manish Malhotra: We went shopping and saw this satiny fabric, like a lime-green color going into pistachio. And Adi said, “This green is really bright.” But I said, “It will look really nice. Let’s use it.”

Kajol: We didn’t think so much about what the impact [of the color] eventually would be. We all agreed that the [green] color was going to look very nice on screen. Nobody thought about whether it would be trendsetting or anything like that. We just wanted it to look good and shoot comfortably in it - at least, my thought was that we should be comfortable in it.

Manish Malhotra: That green got very, very famous for Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

The train scene: How DDLJ’s ending ran away with audiences’ hearts.

Kajol: We shot for about three days in Apta railway station [in Mumbai]. It was so hot at that time, and with this ghagra [gonna lunga] - it was this incredibly heavy outfit that I was wearing.

Manish Malhotra: I remember with any heavy outfit, she would tease me. “You wear it first.” For this outfit, I was very keen we shouldn’t do [a traditional] red; we should do gold. [Finally, we chose] one where there’s gold kota [lavorazione del tessuto tipica della città di Kota] work. They all said, “That’s really nice. It’ll look heavy, but it won’t look like too much because it’s a daytime sequence.”

Shah Rukh Khan: All I was to do was to hold Kajol’s hand, so that was simple. And she does run awesomely in a lehenga...

Kajol: The train wasn’t going as fast as it looks. [Laughs.] It wasn’t the running so much, just the crying. Your eyes are swollen and red by the end of the day because you’re crying for three days straight.

Shah Rukh Khan: I was more keen on the fight that happens before that because I felt it will add some non-mushy stuff to this film. I was way happier holding the gun than holding Simran’s hand. [Laughs.]

Lalit Pandit: When the action part was happening, I was singing out these pieces I had in mind, in sync with the actions happening: Shah Rukh is being beaten by this gang, and his father’s getting hurt. And when I played out that [song] to Adi, he completely rejected it. He said, “Play ‘Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna’ here.” I completely disagreed. He said, “If you play this in a different manner, just try to change the phrase a little bit but keep that melody. You’ll see, people will clap in the audience.” So I took a lot of the chorus section and I asked the dholis to play the rhythm. And instead of making it melodic, I made an aggressive kind of singing. Then, for that emotional piece where Kajol is running, I said, “Okay, why don’t I play the melody from Tujhe Dekha To - one part we have not used throughout the film: Lataji humming.” Adi, Jatin, and I were roaming around the theater on the first day of the film opening. When this part came on, I was very alert to see how the audience would react. And just as Adi had said, people were clapping as soon as this part came on.

Shah Rukh Khan: There could have been no other ending, but I did not think it would be as iconic as it eventually turned out to be.

Lalit Pandit: When you watch the film, it’s so appealing because by the time you are hearing this piece again, you remember every bit of it from [earlier]. The moment the saxophone plays in that part, you get a goosebump.

Anupam Kher: [The premiere] was the who’s who of the film industry, of the city, of the politicians. [They] were there watching the film because it was Mr. Chopra’s son’s first film. The film finished and there was pin-drop silence. And Mr. Chopra looked at me like, “Oh my God, something has gone wrong.” It [seemed to be] a never-ending silence, and then after a minute, there was a never-ending standing ovation. That was the magic of the film.

With more than 1,000 consecutive weeks in theaters, an all-time classic is born.

Manish Malhotra: I think Dilwale is a film which showed, in the ’90s, that youngsters had a mind of their own. It spoke about a time of the changing youth. And it also spoke about the changing time of the parents.

Anupam Kher: I have met millions and millions of young boys and girls who say, “We want our parents to be like Raj’s father...”

Kajol: Every generation goes through a point of rebellion and then eventually realizes that rebellion is really not the way to go. You need to figure things out. You need to work through them rather than rebelling against something. It’s not only Indian. Everybody feels like “I don’t want to hurt my family. I don’t want to lose what I have in my family, and I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want everybody to love who I love.” It made sense, then and now. I think that’s why it’s eternal.

Sharmishta Roy: The film bridged two ideologies. We had the generation before who believed in conventional relationships, and the film honored that. At the same time, it made a statement about how the youth think and their need for space. I think of the film poster: Here is a man with a woman on his shoulders. At the same time, she’s dressed traditionally.

Manish Malhotra: The film had tradition; it had family values; it celebrated culture. And yet there was so much of youth and modernness to it. The visual was so fresh. Every young Indian living abroad and Indian living in India identified with it.

Jatin Pandit: It’s an extraordinary love story. And the combination of East and West, and with the music, photography... There’s so much of repeat [value in this film]. I myself have seen it at least 20 times in theaters with my family.

Kajol: A film is never about only one person. It’s about everybody put together. Everybody put their little bits of energy and love into it. It’s a memory more than a film, really. It’s like watching my very own personal photo album.

Shah Rukh Khan: I think DDLJ helped me cement my place and brought me fame in a way that I didn’t think it would. We were all living in the moment, trying to make the best film we could. There are so many reasons attributed to its success, but I don’t think any one specific thing can explain the phenomenon it has become. I think all the success is to be credited to the pure heart with which the film was made by Adi, Yashji, and the entire cast and crew - and my nonexistent “good looks.” It’s been a struggle to not be considered romantic and sweet for the last 25 years - a struggle, I guess, I am happy to lose'.

FATIMA BHUTTO: NUOVI RE DEL MONDO

Dal 7 aprile 2023 è in distribuzione nelle librerie italiane il saggio Nuovi re del mondo. Corrispondenze da Bollywood, dal Dizi e dal K-pop, di Fatima Bhutto, pubblicato da Minimum Fax. Fatima Bhutto, scrittrice pachistana, è imparentata con nomi noti della politica del suo Paese. Benazir Bhutto, ad esempio, è sua zia. 

Nel comunicato ufficiale si legge:

'Immaginari inediti si stanno affiancando a quello occidentale sulla scena globale. Un vasto movimento culturale pone una sfida importante ai grandi brand della cultura pop americana, da Hollywood a McDonald’s. Nuovi re del mondo è il racconto degli sviluppi recenti della cultura di massa: i film indiani di Bollywood, le soap opera turche (dizi) e la musica pop della Corea del Sud, nota come K-pop. Mixando con cura modernità e valori tradizionali, in contesti urbanizzati sempre più ampi, queste fabbriche dei sogni stanno creando un pop differente, in grado di superare i confini locali e diffondersi in luoghi e culture molto diversi.

Negli ultimi anni la band di maggiore successo al mondo, i BTS, è coreana, i blockbuster indiani hanno una popolarità che va oltre le frontiere nazionali, e le telenovele turche riscontrano un successo che unisce il Medioriente all’Italia, alla Spagna, all’America Latina. In un ampio reportage, l’autrice traccia il profilo di Shah Rukh Khan, per molti versi la star più popolare al mondo; va dietro le quinte di Magnificent Century, il più importante tra i dizi, seguito da oltre duecento milioni di persone in 43 paesi; e scopre come è iniziato il K-pop in Corea del Sud. Un’importante testimonianza dei tanti poli di una cultura pop che prende forma davanti ai nostri occhi'.

Nella prefazione al saggio si legge:

'Se le storie della produzione turca e di quella coreana sono tutto sommato recenti, con mercati interni di dimensioni limitate da superare con una studiata politica di esportazioni sostenuta attivamente dal governo, l’India ha una tradizione molto più articolata e un mercato interno decisamente più grande e autosufficiente. Fatima Bhutto dedica buona parte del suo Nuovi re del mondo a ricostruirne le fasi principali mettendole in relazione ai cambiamenti politici interni e, soprattutto, alla svolta neoliberista degli anni Novanta, incarnata cinematograficamente da alcuni eclatanti casi di divismo attoriale, e in particolar modo dalla figura complessa di Shah Rukh Khan, incontrata da Bhutto a Dubai alternando al suo profilo squarci di dialogo che rivelano la dimensione quotidiana del mito. Un mito che vive non solo nel vicino Medio Oriente ma in Paesi lontani che nulla hanno a che fare con l’India, come il Perù, che consuma il cinema di Bollywood fin dagli anni Cinquanta, dove Khan, tra gli altri, incarna un modello vincente per le popolazioni andine, strappate dalla loro terra e gettate nei meandri della capitale a condurre vite spesso miserabili'.

Video promozionale di New Kings of the World. Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-pop (2019)

Aggiornamento del 3 luglio 2023 - Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Fatima Bhutto a Federico Chiara, pubblicata oggi da Vogue Italia:

'Cosa ti ha spinto a scrivere questo libro?

Volevo esplorare la politica della cultura, più specificamente il modo in cui la cultura viene usata come forma di potere. L’hard power è fatto di carri armati, pistole e guerra, il soft power è Elvis e la Coca-Cola e il rock and roll. Trasporta le idee in modo gentile ma non innocente.

Perché siamo sempre più attratti da culture pop non occidentali? E perché pensi che queste ultime stiano perdendo colpi?

Il processo di globalizzazione è cambiato tanto ma ha anche tradito molte promesse: è stato detto che avrebbe portato ricchezza e opportunità per tutti, che ci avrebbe collegato attraverso gli oceani e avrebbe trasformato in meglio le nostre esistenza. È successo, ma solo per alcuni. A milioni di persone è stata venduta la stessa promessa, col risultato che hanno lasciato le loro case nei villaggi per trasferirsi nelle grandi città aspettandosi di essere trattate come capitani d’industria, ma lì si sono trovate alienate, isolate, abbandonate. (...)

Parli di migranti che affrontano spostamenti a breve e a lungo raggio, dunque.

La maggior parte delle migrazioni nel mondo di oggi non riguarda tanto le persone che abbandonano l’Africa o l’Asia per trasferirsi in Europa, ma chi si sposta all’interno dei propri Paesi, muovendosi dai villaggi alle città. E la cultura pop occidentale non descrive questa difficoltà, questa sofferenza che stanno vivendo centinaia di milioni di migranti. Ma gli spettacoli turchi sì, gli spettacoli nigeriani sì, Bollywood sì, parlano di quella solitudine e umiliazione e di quanto sia difficile vivere una vita dignitosa nel mondo moderno. I film o le serie occidentali parlano di supereroi, sesso, miliardari. Non parlano più di ciò che il mondo sta affrontando.

Bollywood ha un’industria dell’intrattenimento molto ben avviata: quali sono gli ingredienti del suo duraturo successo?

Quando nel 2019 ho scritto Nuovi re del mondo, Bollywood era un’industria diversa. Se dovessi riscriverlo oggi non la includerei, e ti spiego la ragione. Fino al 2010 Bollywood è stato uno specchio dell’India riflettendo, di volta in volta, l’ottimismo per l’indipendenza nei film degli anni 40-60, le lotte contro la corruzione e il potere negli anni 70, lo shock del neoliberismo negli anni 90. Oggi è ancora uno specchio dell’India, ma l’India è cambiata: al governo c’è un partito indù che ha una storia di violenza contro le minoranze - si pensi ai massacri del Gujarat contro i musulmani nei primi anni 2000 o alla violenza contro i cristiani in Assam oggi. I film mainstream ora riflettono questo: sono solo noiosa propaganda, non arte'.

BREAKING DOWN PATHAAN, THE MOST POPULAR MOVIE IN THE WORLD

Per fortuna i miei timori si sono rivelati infondati: Pathaan sta letteralmente incendiando il botteghino, e non solo in India, frantumando tutti i precedenti record di incassi con la rapidità e la precisione chirurgica e spietata di un raggio laser. Persino nel nostro Paese, grazie alla lungimiranza del circuito UCI, si è guadagnato numerose proiezioni, molte delle quali aggiunte all'ultimo minuto, a testimonianza di un successo non previsto ma reale. 

Purtroppo non ho ancora potuto gustarmi il film, magari è una schifezza, ma inutile precisare che sono in primo luogo superiperfelice per il Re: dopo le batoste familiari e personali subite negli ultimi tempi, una rivincita di proporzioni planetarie era proprio quello che la suprema legge della compensazione multiversale doveva avere in serbo per lui. In secondo luogo, sono felice per l'industria cinematografica hindi, ingiustamente, volgarmente, sproporzionatamente attaccata. In terzo luogo, sono felice perché si è forse accesa una luce in fondo al tunnel: di politica me ne frego, ma chiunque - di destra, di sinistra, di centro, di sopra, di sotto, di lato - osi toccare il cinema indiano, non merita la mia stima. E chiunque osi toccare il Re, sul piano personale, non condivide il mio patrimonio biologico e genetico.

Vi riporto di seguito il magnifico articolo Breaking down Pathaan, the most popular movie in the world, di Swati Sharma, pubblicato ieri da Vox. Il pezzo include una conversazione con il talentuoso critico cinematografico Rahul Desai.

'One of the biggest movie stars in the world is at one of the most tenuous moments in his career. Bollywood titan Shah Rukh Khan hasn’t made a movie in almost five years, his two most recent films failed to captivate audiences, he’s at odds with India’s ruling government, and his industry has been plagued by pandemic disruptions, boycotts from right-wing activists, and anger over nepotism. His latest film, which was released on January 25, is perhaps the biggest test of his star power in his 30-year career.

But the stakes of Khan’s movie Pathaan go far beyond the actor’s relevance. A Muslim man from a middle-class family, Khan hasn’t succumbed to the growing trend of Hindu nationalism that has dominated Bollywood for the last several years. He’s in fact been a target of the right-wing Hindutva government that has been in power since 2014, due to the charismatic star’s singular influence in India and many other parts of the world.

When the sleek high-budget action film Pathaan came out on the eve of India’s Republic Day, it became the biggest film in the world, knocking down Avatar The Way of Water, which had held the top spot for weeks. (...) The film has broken all sorts of records. It is one of the highest-grossing Hindi films of all time. (...)

Though Bollywood is facing myriad issues, one thing is apparent: The Indian government’s mission of promoting Hindu nationalism above all else has wounded Hindi cinema’s freedom of expression, influence, and even profits. It seemed possible that these attempts would sink India’s biggest icon as well. But it didn’t. To unpack the significance of this film and the present and future of Bollywood, I spoke to Rahul Desai. (...)

Q. Like Hollywood, Bollywood - the Hindi film industry - was all but shut down during the pandemic. What was the state of the industry leading up to the release of Pathaan?

Before the pandemic, Hindi cinema was already struggling. There was a big nepotism scandal after a famous actor who was an outsider, Sushant Singh Rajput, died by suicide. There was a narrative that mainstream blockbusters from the South had an edge on the Hindi film industry, which is in northern India. The public caught a feeling that, to put it bluntly, Bollywood was the villain in Indian cinema. Covid only made things worse.

To be honest, since 2015 or 2016, I’ve struggled to make annual best movie lists because there have not been enough contenders. So unpopularity wasn’t completely unwarranted, but things got very toxic in the last few years, and Bollywood movies have been underperforming. The Marvel films that release in India and Telugu blockbusters like RRR outperform Hindi movies even in Mumbai, which is the center of the Hindi film industry.

Q. India has also changed a lot politically. The country, though a Hindu-majority nation, was founded on secular principles. But since 2014, the right-wing government has been promoting Hindu fundamentalism. It seems like the government is influencing Bollywood more than ever.

There has been a relationship between Bollywood and the government, but that relationship stopped at freedom of expression. Many film stars may have had their own political opinions, but that did not stop them from making movies that were expressive, and that were brave, and that were secular in many ways. Communalism and religious prejudice have always plagued this country. It’s just that this current particular establishment has weaponized that compared to the previous ones. Why? Because Bollywood has maximum influence over the masses, and they realized very quickly that this medium is how they will get their ideas across.

Because of that, the government has broken many of the powerful people in the industry into some kind of submission. Stars won’t speak up when one of their contemporaries is being harassed or when one of their own is being bullied. I can’t fault them for that, because their livelihoods and careers are at stake. It’s a very precarious situation for a lot of the celebrities to be in.

This has a knock-on effect on the kinds of films that are being made. The government’s hands are in the kind of stories being told and the kind of actors that are propped up, especially if they openly showcase their Hinduism. You see a rise of patriotic films that pretend to be patriotic, but they are obviously preaching a very different kind of nationalism as compared to, say, the films of the past that represented secular ideology and gentle patriotism, saying, We are proud of the country we are in, but it doesn’t have to cross the line. Now a lot of lines are being crossed.

Q. This brings us to the topic at hand: Pathaan has been one of the most anticipated releases in Bollywood over the last few years. There are many reasons why, but one of the biggest is Shah Rukh Khan, or SRK. Give us a sense of who he is.

Khan has been the biggest superstar of the modern era in Hindi cinema, since the early 1990s. He has been the name that a lot of people associate with India. If you go to the most obscure foreign country, the one name people will know is Shah Rukh Khan. They’ll name one of his movies from the ’90s or hum one of his famous songs. He’s been an icebreaker for Indian travelers all over the world. He’s been that icon for three decades.

Q. And, of course, Bollywood has many, many stars! In fact, there are two other Khans - Salman and Aamir. Along with SRK, these three Muslim actors were dominant in the 1990s and 2000s, and are still relevant today. But SRK, who is from a middle-class family and the only non-nepo baby of the group, speaks about secularism, has a father who was a freedom fighter for India’s independence, and transcends other stars in India.

Khan has the ultimate underdog story: He is the most famous outsider in the industry, and it’s always his story that wins cinema. People don’t just go to watch him so much as celebrate his story. He represents what can be accomplished if you just leave everything and travel to Mumbai with your bags, no matter how promising you were in other fields - and you become a superstar. To this day, people still come to Mumbai with him as the example to strive for. That very idea of the India that he and the three Khans represent is an inherently secular idea of India.

The three Khans have been mostly dominant for the last three decades. But for SRK, the last decade or so, as he entered his late 40s and now his late 50s, has been a struggle. His last films stopped working for a bunch of reasons, mostly because they were not very good. They were terrible. And he was not very good in them either, because he was at that awkward age where he didn’t know whether to be Shah Rukh Khan, or to be an actor, or to be a character actor.

It happens to many stars - he was trying to get a box office success, especially as the two other Khans, Aamir and Salman, continued to shine. If you look at the biggest hits in Bollywood, the top five spots before Pathaan were taken by Aamir and Salman Khan. I felt like at some point, SRK got insecure that he never broke records, though he was a safe bet. He was always everyone’s sort of ideal lover, ideal son, and a cultural icon. But he was not the biggest box office draw anymore. I think that got him into the race for box office success, and that’s when he started doing films that were pretty bad. For the first time in his 30-year career, he didn’t have a film release for almost five years, so it’s all built up to a story within a story, and that’s the prelude to Pathaan.

Q. So SRK is a huge star in India, but three decades in, he’s trying to find his way through a changing industry. That part of his story is pretty typical. (...) The thing that’s different with Khan is his relationship with India’s current government.

Funnily enough, a lot of my generation growing up in the 1990s didn’t think of the Khans as Muslim or Hindu superstars; we just looked at them as superstars in Bollywood, and we considered “Khan” the most stylish surname. When I was watching films in Mumbai many years later and focused on the myth of Shah Rukh Khan, I started to get more and more connected with how the narrative of religion is being used by this current establishment. If the new Hindu nationalist ruling party had to really take down the idea of secularity, they had to take down the ultimate symbol of it as well. It’s no coincidence Khan has been indirectly targeted in the last four or five years.

SRK himself is a Muslim actor, and even if he’s playing Hindu characters in these films - which was mostly the case - there’s always a sense in the back of your head that this is a superstar who’s very open about his religion, who’s not ashamed of his religion, who doesn’t hide his religion. The current government has wanted stars to cozy up to its Hindu nationalist narrative. Shah Rukh Khan, though, has resisted and kept his silence, which has become a statement. He hasn’t spoken up for the government as much as a lot of the other celebrities in this country, so you always feel like he hasn’t conformed and he is not broken. 

All this reached a head last year when the saga with SRK’s son unfolded. Aryan Khan [then 23] was arrested and jailed on trumped-up drug charges. As ironic as it may sound, that’s when the tides turned against the right-wing government and toward SRK. People felt the government went too far. It was too blatant. They went after a Muslim superstar and everyone’s favorite hero. That’s part of Pathaan’s success as well.

The movie was a fun one, but let’s be honest: It’s an action movie that we’ve seen a hundred times before. It’s not a masterpiece. I can name three other better Hindi action films in the last 10 years, but the context cannot be divorced from the movie. It’s so important to take it into consideration, because that’s why a lot of us are rooting for the success of Pathaan. When you push your country’s favorite superstar into a corner, people feel obligated to root for that star after a while. I don’t think he still was the biggest star in the country until all the things with his son happened last year. That’s when he was brought back into the limelight.

Once I became a professional film critic, I never really liked to get into this discourse, to talk him up as “the India we need, and not the India we have.” But as it turns out in the last year or so, there’s no escaping that discourse.

Q. As you say, there are a few things happening before Pathaan: Bollywood desperately needs a hit, Shah Rukh Khan’s popularity is being tested. And then - I don’t want to exaggerate this, but it seems like it’s the question - can an actor at odds with the government be successful or not?

I’ll be honest, I didn’t see it coming. I actually was preparing for the worst. Seeing what has been happening in this country in the last 10 years, I thought, we are going to see SRK almost begging people to go watch the film, which is not a good look for anyone. To my absolute shock, the film was a huge success.

The patriotism we see in Pathaan - I won’t say it’s brave, I won’t say it’s rebellious in any way. But it’s sort of subversive, because SRK is playing a character called Pathaan, which is the name of the Pashto-speaking group in Afghanistan and Pakistan who are mostly Muslim. He’s not saying he is an Indian Muslim; he says he feels connected to a village in Afghanistan. That has nothing to do with India. You’re not exactly going straight on or hitting the heart of Hindu nationalism here. What you are doing is being Shah Rukh Khan and starring in a film called Pathaan and then releasing it in this atmosphere we are in. After all of Bollywood’s struggles and the state of the nation, it’s a breather. All the stars aligned.

Q. Tell me more about the significance of the title of the movie, and Pathaan the character.

The significance of the title is that patriotism isn’t a Hindu birthright anymore. It’s not tied to a certain kind of religion. I see a lot of people criticizing the fact that SRK’s character doesn’t say he’s an Indian Muslim. We don’t know his real name - Pathaan was given to him by a family he met in Afghanistan. But it’s not about what kind of Muslim you are or where you come from. It’s the fact that your love for your country, your love for film, your love for people, your love for art in general, should not be hijacked by one particular community.

That’s what the film does so smartly. They don’t take potshots at Hinduism, the way a lot of Hindu nationalist films have been taking potshots at Islam for the last 10 years. Instead, what it does is put forward a very different idea of Islam. That’s the more human and more dignified way to make a statement, rather than running down one community to glorify another.

Q. One thing that’s fascinating is the movie had to be a very fun, popcorn action film. If it was a beautiful indie masterpiece and didn’t have mass appeal, it wouldn’t have this kind of impact.

There is no question about the fact that Pathaan was written with Shah Rukh Khan’s particular situation in mind. The director and the writers all but admitted in interviews that of course it was made and designed around Shah Rukh Khan’s comeback. They won’t go so far to say whatever political commentary they wanted to deliver through him, but there is no doubt that all of it was taken into consideration for this to work and for this film to infiltrate the top five Bollywood hits ever. In terms of box office successes, it’s as good as it gets and as timely as it gets.

Q. The movie doesn’t have overt Hindu nationalist themes, but many believe (...) it has a problematic Pakistani narrative. Do you agree?

When I started watching the film, two scenes in the beginning scared me. The first scene shows a Pakistani general vowing to destroy India, and the second is SRK’s introduction, where he tells someone to only speak in Hindi, a metric that this current government has been really pushing down our throats in the last 10 years. I was quite wary.

But then if you read deeper into a silly film like this - and it is silly on its surface - I don’t think the vilification of Pakistan exists as people think it does. The main female actor, Deepika Padukone, plays an ISI [Pakistan’s CIA] agent who rebels against her own government, who does not agree with what the ISI is doing, and says that her people would never agree to biological warfare against India. That Pakistan is the Pakistan that we don’t see in Hindi movies enough.

SRK’s character is more of a rogue agent, because he’s not really working for the Indian government - he’s been brought out of exile. He doesn’t agree with his boss’s, the colonel’s, methods and criticizes him. You see a sense of dissent in the Pathaan character toward his own government and the establishment. He’s more of an individual. That’s why I felt like this sort of patriotism that you see here was the language of rebellion that we’ve all but lost in a lot of Indian movies in the last decade. This kind of nuance may not be for the masses. For them, it’s like any other patriotic film, except Shah Rukh Khan is in it. I’m glad that people are consuming it without really realizing that it’s not the kind of film they think it is.

Q. Let’s revisit what’s at stake. Shah Rukh Khan is thriving - he even spoke about how the movie celebrates unity in India because it stars a Muslim, a Hindu, and a Christian. Is this going to slow down any of these Hindu nationalist plots in Indian films? Is this really a win for secularism in India?

It’s too early to say right now. For now I’d say the one thing it’s done is signal that there is still a place for a very old kind of patriotism and secularism that our country and Bollywood specifically grew up showcasing. Hindu nationalist films that we’ve been seeing over the last decade or so are already losing audiences, even before Pathaan. A lot of that is also because people are out again after the pandemic. Cabin fever has receded, and people have become a little more sane compared to two or three years ago, when everything was supposed to be a war against something else.

What Pathaan’s success has done is given some kind of hope to an entire generation of producers and superstars and actors and technicians, who still want to make the kind of films they want to. I’m not saying they’re good films or bad films, but they make films that are more liberal in their worldview. We had seen a lot of those films recede into the background in the last 10 years, so I’d like to hope that this is a turning point. I’d like to hope that the year of Pathaan is the year that things start to change. At the same time, I’m going to be a little cautious about that, because things don’t change overnight.

I don’t think a lot of the mainstream Hindi film industry has a political ideology. Most powerful people do not subscribe to one kind of political identity. They go where the money goes. Right now, what Pathaan has done is shown that the money is going in a certain direction.

A lot of people say that it’s cruel to talk about box office numbers. I used to look down on these figures for the longest time, but every morning I check them. For better or worse, it’s a measuring stick for the conscience of the nation right now'.

Vedi anche:

- How Bollywood is rewriting history

- Shah Rukh Khan: two decades of pure feeling